'Ardent homophobe' Jesse Helms is dead

http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/7-11/news/national/12919.cfm
7/11/2008

Jesse Helms, a man whom critics called "an ardent homophobe" and someone who "tarnished the Republican Party," died last week at age 86.
He started off as a racist and then became an ardent homophobe, picking on people who were sick and dying," Basile said. "He was a bully and a bigot. And those who now remember him as just a conservative, I think malign the word conservative."